When to Thin Frutt. 135 
strong, vigorous foliage to complete the formation of fruit buds 
for the following year, there will either be a lack of bloom or 
a show of bloom unfit to set, and the tree will work for itself 
next year, and not for you, because this year you would not work 
for it. In this particular, thinning fruit coincides in purpose with 
pruning to limit the amount of bearing wood, which has already 
been considered. 
Other objects there also are which are related directly to the 
profit of orcharding and should command respect from the most 
careless, The following is an emphatic statement of the case:* 
There are at least six ways in which growers are repaid for thinning 
peaches, nectarines or apricots designed for drying:— . 
First: You can thin off half the fruit when small quicker than you 
could pick it when large, and when mature the time required to fill a basket 
depends mainly upon the number of peaches it holds. * 
Second: It takes just as long to cut and spread on a drying tray a 
small peach as a large one. It takes longer to cut eight peaches that will 
weigh a pound than to cut three and pick off five when they are little. 
Third: If peaches run six to the pound the weight of pits will not 
vary much from that of the cured fruit. If they run three to the pound, they 
will weigh not much over half. A ton of large peaches is as likely to yield 
400 pounds of dried as a ton of small fruit of the same variety to yield 
300 pounds. It meansa difference of about $8.00 per ton in the value of 
the fresh fruit to the dryer. It will cost over $1.00 per ton to thin a heavily 
laden peach orchard in a way to make that difference. 
Fourth: Granted that you leave fruit to reach the same weight at 
maturity, still you leave it along the body and in places on the limbs where 
the weight has no breaking leverage and take it off the ends where it may 
get sun-burned and is almost sure to break the tree. 
Fifth: Vitality drawn from the plant and certain elements of fertility 
from the soil, are in proportion to the number of seeds matured. The 
pulp cuts little figure except in aerial substances and water. 
Sixth: Suppose that fruit dried from peaches that weigh three to the 
pound only brings one cent a pound more than that from peaches half that 
size. Two cents would more accurately measure the difference in value. 
Still, the smaller figure is enough to meet the whole cost of picking and 
hauling or of cutting and drying in any well-managed establishment. 
When to Thin Fruit—Thinning of fruit should begin with 
the winter pruning of bearing trees, as has been already urged 
in connection with regulating the amount of bearing wood allot- 
ted to each tree. After this is carefully done, there is the thin- 
ning of bloom, which is urged on the ground of least possible 
loss of energy by the tree in the partial development of fruit 
to be subsequently removed. Hand-thinning of individual 
blooms is impracticable on a commercial scale, but removal of 
spurs or twigs, or shortening of them with shears, is feasible 
enough. The objection must lie in the fact that profusion of 
bloom does not necessarily indicate an excessive set of fruit, and 
any severe reduction of bloom is, therefore, venturesome unless 
* Condensed from F. S. Chapin. 
